Medical labs receive from physicians samples of blood, serum, urine and other body fluids in receptacles, accompanied by their particular labels on which the desired tests, for instance, blood sugar, AIDS and the like, are checked off. Typically the receptacles are small tubes and they are also used in lab work. They are coded, for instance, by means of stick-on labels to be fed into a computer together with the test requirements.
The receptacles are placed into input magazines wherein they are configured, for instance, in rows in racks or in a planar array in trays, the trays optionally also being furnished with several racks. The receptacles are upright in these input magazines in which they are first moved to a primary distributor. The task of this primary distributor is to read the code of every incoming receptacle, to interrogate the computer about the desired test, and then to place each receptacle, by means of a sorter device, on one or several destination transport means that move the receptacles to individual analyzers for the different tests. In turn, the destination transport means may be magazines, for instance trays, by means of which the receptacles are manually moved from the primary distributor to the analyzers. However, they also may be conveyor belts in which, in their erect position or, if called for in magazines, they are moved, for instance, to a high-output analyzer in high demand.
A primary distributor of this type is known from German patent document 296 08 120 U1. The receptacles are moved in racks to this primary distributor and then, while in these racks, they are placed on a conveyor belt moving the receptacles through a device opening their seals, through a read unit and to a sorter device wherein the receptacles are removed by a sorter gripper from the racks on the conveyor belt and are transferred as required into the particular destination trays.
These known primary distributors incur the drawback that the sorter gripper transports only one receptacle at a time. This sorter gripper must grip each receptacle individually from the conveyor belt, move it to the particular destination tray, deposit it on the tray, and move back. Because of the substantial distances it must cover, its output is intrinsically limited.